Friday, June 11, 2010

Ryan travels outside of the city all the time for work, he gets out of the hustle and bustle, gets to actually drive a car, and even gets to make Target or grocery trips for me! I on the other hand have only been out of the city once since we moved here. I love living in the city, but I do miss seeing greenery, trees, and (in the words of the Dixie Chicks!) being able to look at the horizon and not see a building standing tall!! And we both of coarse miss going to the beach! Laying out at Central Park just doesn't appeal to me! I want a pool I can jump in or an ocean I can run into!!! So on Monday we decided to spend the holiday out in Long Island. Ryan's family was so nice having us out to Gilgo beach for the day! They stayed out there for the weekend on their boat so we got to hang out on the dock eating great food, walk across the street to the lay out at on the beach, and even take a boat ride!! The water was FREEZING!! So we just walked up beach along the water getting our feet wet (no one was swimming..not even kids!) We had a great day and can't wait to spend some more time out there this summer!!

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Lindsey left Gracie in California with Matthew, Grammy & Grandpa and came to visit 2 weeks ago to come check out New York. She got in Tuesday night and left Saturday night and we spent the whole time on the go! We saw almost everything that she wanted to see while she was here and so much more! Here is our check list...even though I'm sure I forgot some of the places we went to!

Check List:

a Central Park

a Jackie O' Reservoir

a Metropolitan Museum of Art

a High end shopping on the Upper East Side

a Lincoln Center

a Metropolitan Opera House

a Juilliard School

a ManhattanTemple

a Canal Street

a China Town

a Little Italy

a SoHo

a The Fashion District

a Times Square

a Fox New Building

a Rockefeller Center

a Garment District

a Radio City Music Hall

a Dean & Deluca

a The Rainbow Room

a Jimmy Fallon Monologue Rehearsal

a NBC Studio Tour

SNL Studio

World News Studio

Late Show Studio

a The Diamond District

On the running track around the Jackie O' Reservoir in Central Park

It was in the high 90's on Wednesday with about 120% humidity--it was so HOT!!

Metropolitan Museum of Art

We knew it would be air conditioned here so it was the perfect place to go on a day when being outside was unbearable (even though we spent the whole day walking around the city before and after the museum!) We saw a lot of the museum but our favorite was a really neat exhibit called "American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity" that showed American fashion through the decades. Sadly we couldn't take pictures but all the dresses, shoes, purses, hair styles, and body shapes were so fun to see!

Top of the Met

Walking around the very posh East side where we found Lindsey's favorite designer

The Manhattan Temple

Its hard to see but its the building in the back behind all the taxis!

Metropolitan Opera House

We got to see all the people walking out of the opera one night, its fun to people watch and see all the outfits as they are leaving the opera!

Garment District

Linz wanted to check out some of the fabric stores down here

Times Square (notice that we are now wearing jeans and sweaters...)

Radio City Music Hall

The Dean & Deluca across from the Today Show

Linz really wanted to go see the Fox News building..we went in but sadly this was as close as she could get! We thought about just running in quick to see how far we could get but decided not to since there was a lot of security around!

Outside of the building

Out to dinner with Ryan after he got back home from Boston

Lindsey swears that there was a pro football player eating at the table next to us but we couldn't figure out who he was!

On the subway

Times Square

Rockefeller Center

They had the flags changed because of Memorial Day

A few stories that didn't have pictures to go along...

On Friday we tried to get tickets to go see Late Night with Jimmy Fallon but since we got there a little late we didn't have a good chance of getting in. They gave us a standby ticket for the show and also for the rehearsal of his monologue so that either way we would at least get to see him. It was so fun! There were about 40 of us who went in and Jimmy just came out and sat and talked to us all and then basically ran through his jokes to see what worked and what didn't. The writers were sitting off to the side making notes and changing things the whole time. And Jimmy was really funny- when no one laughed at one he would be like "yeah I didn't think it was funny either" It was fun to see how he worked and watch him crack up at himself. Since it was for a Friday show we also got to watch him rehearse his "thank you notes" (if you watch the show you know what that is). We were sitting in the front row so when he first came out and was telling us what he was going to do and what he wanted us to do he asked Linz if she could whistle.. her response was "yeah, really well" so naturally he asked her to whistle, which she then attempted to do. She totally can not whistle!! It was super quiet (sitting next to her I could barely hear it!) so everyone started laughing and Jimmy thought it was hilarious. He started making fun of her and saying that in case of a fire it was her job to alert us all and when we heard her whistle (which he then had he do again) we would all know to run. Everyone was laughing and we both thought it was pretty cool that Jimmy Fallon was making fun of her! Sadly we didn't get into the actual show, but really the guests weren't that great and just seeing the rehearsal was good enough!

When we went down to Canal Street on Thursday Linz really wanted to find a Chanel purse. We found a shady Asian guy whispering about purses so we asked and then followed him about 10 blocks up to another group of people who then showed us the cards with pictures of purses on them. The large Chanel purse was $160 and we got them down to $80, but we still hadn't seen it. I'm pretty sure neither of us wanted to actually buy the purse we just wanted to see the quality! So she started talking on her walkie-talkie in Chinese and we had to wait about 10 minutes before a man finally emerged with a black plastic bag. As soon as we saw it we said "no" because it really didn't look that great at all. But the Chinese girl was MAD! We just hurried and walked away, without the purse.

It was such a fun (but exhausting) week! When she left on Saturday night she took Karma with her, which was so sad! We're leaving on Saturday for a trip to Ireland and Scotland and the day after we get back we're going to California where we'll be until the 5th of July! So since we were going to be gone for 12 days and then in CA for almost 2 weeks it worked out better for her to take Karma home with her and then when we come back home to NYC we'll bring her home with us. But it has been kinda sad around here without her!!